Too Late For Javascript Tutorials?

While the question might seem too specific, I'm gonna use it to talk about a broader term, which is how to enter an already “saturated” niche.

As you might know, people have been creating JavaScript tutorials for a long time and the internet is crowded with a LOT of information. How to enter and compete with those people and tutorials? How to beat them?

Watch this video and find out!

Transcript Of The Video

John Sonmez:

Hey, what's up? John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com. I have a question about JavaScript tutorial. Yes. It will be somewhat of a technical question, but, somehow, I always avoid the technical question. Some of you think that I don't—that I've never actually coded in my life, but if you think that I will tell you, before I get into the question, go check out my Pluralsight courses. I have 55 of them and you judge because I know some of you leave comments. You're like, “Oh, has he ever coded a day in his life?” I get it. Maybe I don't look like a coder. Maybe I don't sound like a coder or maybe I don’t talk about coding stuff anymore, but I did for a long time and that's why I can talk about some of these things.

I'd rather give you—honestly like there's a lot of people that give you technical advice and that's great. I used to do that too, but I'd rather give you the kind of skills that are going to help you more in life or more principle based that are going to apply to more than one situation. There's plenty of people that give you technical skills. I don’t think there are so many people that are giving you really the life skills that are going to benefit you in life. That's what I'm doing here.

I got a question from Yazeed. I like that name. That's cool, Yazeed, and he says, “You've inspired me to start teaching on YouTube.” Awesome. Yazeed, where's your fucking channel? Let me see the link. Come on, man. “I want to start with Java”—oh, wait a minute. Oh, I see. I've inspired you but you haven't started a channel yet. Okay. I'm not trying to make fun of you, Yazeed, but how many of you have said that like enough. Go and do—I don’t even have to read the rest of the question. Go and do it. Go and do it. If you fail, do it again. If you keep on trying, you're going to eventually succeed, but if you keep on being inspired and you don't actually do anything, nothing is going to happen. I promise you, okay?

Again, I'm not trying to make fun of you, Yazeed. I think it's great that you're inspired and you want to make a YouTube channel, but let's read on here. He says, “I want to start with JavaScript since it's my bread and butter but JS tutorials are everywhere. Should I teach another topic or try to differentiate myself in the saturated JS space? My strategy was to teach with unparalleled depth.” Okay, I like that. “And build a deep JavaScript content library from language basics to the latest tools and frameworks. An arduous task, for sure, but is it enough?” I like that you used the word arduous. I like that word that's a good word.

Here's the thing. Like I said first, I'm going to stick with my original advice which is—as Dan Martell. I keep on mentioning him because I like what he says. He says, “JFDI.” What is it? Just fucking do it. Do that. That's the first thing. I'm going to say like, whatever you're doing like analysis—paralysis isn't going to get you anywhere. I'd rather you be in the car driving the car the wrong direction, at least going somewhere because then we can steer that car. When you're parked in the driveway, I'm not steering you anywhere. Have you ever tried to turn the wheel of a car that's parked on the driveway? It's pretty hard to turn and it locks. I think like, “Crap,” and then you call Triple A and like, “My steering wheel is locked.” Maybe if you're just me. Anyway, it locks up, right? You're not going anywhere. You're not changing direction. You're not seeing anything different. If you're sitting there in the car and you're like, “Oh, should I go this way? Should I go this way?” No, no. Let's go forward and then we can adjust as we go.

With that said, there's always enough room in the market, but I talk about this a lot of times. You definitely need to check out my playlist on specialization because you need to specialize. You need to slice thin enough. I've got another video coming up. I don’t know the time and the release. I'm talking about 20 minutes on this. Maybe it will be in that playlist by the time you're watching this video. I definitely encourage you to check that out. Along with that—let's talk about that in just a little bit.

If you're going to do this JS space, it's fine. You can do JS, but you need more of a differentiator than just this idea of going really in depth in this arduous goal. What you need to do is you need to figure out how are you going to be different. I talk about this all the time now and I double down on this because I think this is really important. I'm not kidding. How can you be number one best in the world at what you're doing? Whatever it is. The answer is either you can be really, really fucking good. You could be Olympic level athlete or there was this guy—he's still really, really good, but my friend was just telling me about this. This guy did this training here in San Diego. I can't remember the—he's like the gold medalist in the Gay Olympics. I'm not making fun, but I'm saying that's a different slice. You see what I'm saying like he's not competing with everyone. He's picked a spot.

It's the same thing here. Again, I'm not making fun but what I'm saying is that you got to pick where can you be champion. Where can you be king? Where can you be the big fish? It's not just in JavaScript. Unless you're just so phenomenal. I mean you have incredible stage presence. You can do videos like nothing and your voice is golden. Whatever it is but that's probably not the case. Instead, pick a thin slice. Pick something that either you're going to serve a specific community or you're going to go really detailed like granular at what you're doing, or a cross section of both.

I'll give you a quick example. I did a podcast for a while called Get Up and Code. I stopped doing the podcast, but it was an intersection of developers and fitness. That was kind of a cool intersection. I could sort of be the king of that space. Who is the king of doing fitness for developers? Now, if you think about it, what's my intersection? It's soft skills and software development. I can be the king of the—you see what I'm saying? You just got to pick something. Do your JavaScript tutorials, but figure out how you're going to slice it thin enough. It could be that you go really, really deep into one specific technology, which there's plenty of room to do that, or it could be that you serve one specific group of people or you do it in some kind of unique way. I saw this one guy in YouTube, this Indian guy with this like white streak hair and he's doing like machine learning and stuff. I can't remember his name. I should interview him on the channel, but he just likes the way that he's presenting. It's so unique with—it's totally a unique thing.

You got to pick something that's going to make it so that you can differentiate yourself and so that you can be, again, what's the goal? You're going to be number one best in the world. How are you going to do that? You got to slice thin enough. You can always expand out later, but right now if you want to get traction—yes, everyone is doing JavaScript tutorials, but that's opportunity for you because how can you do it so differently? How can you do it so exact?

It's good that there's so much market out there. Big market is not a bad thing. It just means you can slice it up into little pieces. Pick your piece and become the king of that piece. Become the big fish in that pond and then you're going to find success, but, again, it comes back to the first thing. None of this matters if you don’t do it. I'd rather see you just do blame plain vanilla JS tutorials on YouTube just like everyone else and actually do something. If you do that long enough, you're going to succeed as well, but I'd rather see you do something than to do nothing. Most people do nothing.

That's all I got for you today. If you like this video, if you didn’t like this video, if you just want to see what I'm going to do the next, click the Subscribe button. Click actually the bell so you don’t miss any videos. Otherwise, YouTube sometimes doesn’t show you my videos. All right. I'll talk to you next time. Take care.